Awaken the Curse Page 8
Even as weak as he was, he seemed to look straight into her soul, and she looked away lest he read her doubts. “We’ll discuss it when you’re better. I can’t . . .” Her throat closed around the words.
He didn’t answer, but his expression was one of understanding and regret.
She blinked clear her vision, which shimmered with unshed tears. “Perhaps you were right about fate. About destinies that can’t be changed no matter how we try.”
“A believer now?” His eyes closed on an inrush of breath.
“I don’t know what to believe anymore.”
A corner of his mouth twitched. “Believe in him.” His gaze cut to the stranger. A man who stood within the shattered debris of the obelisk. A man who wore his loneliness like a shroud, his strength like a shield. A man who’d offered life in exchange for freedom. But freedom from what? The answer that sprang to mind was unimaginable and yet it made perfect horrible sense when she recalled the enormous convergence of Fey magic in those final moments.
Her unease returned a hundredfold—chest tight, ribs aching, and throat raw with the pressure of grief pushing its way up through her.
“Katie love,” he murmured, eyes closed, “we were right . . . Just one tiny error in our theory . . .” His body stilled but for the even beat of his heart.
Shoulders shaking, tears burned her cheeks. “Let me guess,” she whispered to the silence, “Lucan wasn’t dead?”
* * *
The weeks passed in a blur. The magic within the few proffered drops of Imnada blood had been enough to knit the deepest wounds, fill and empty lungs, keep an uncertain heart beating. The rest lay in luck and James’s own ferocious determination. Katherine nursed him through long days and brief nights, watching with both admiration at the battle he waged and alarm at the toll it took on his spirit, which seemed more guarded, new shadows entering his once clear gaze.
After he’d passed out of danger, she would confront him. She told herself this over and over. But each day she sat beside him and said nothing. Each night she found her bed, still with the words unsaid. The longer she put it off, the more her anger at James grew to become anger at herself. For weakness. For cowardice. For continuing to love him despite her mistrust and her misgivings.
Outside the sickroom, the world spun on. Enid still grumbled, but James continued to improve, if only to prove her gloomy predictions wrong. News came that Monsieur d’Espe had taken a ship from Holyhead back to France. Katherine knew it was wrong, but she couldn’t help wishing for a wicked squall to wash the villain to a watery grave.
Despite her father’s unceasing interrogation of their unexpected guest, Lucan spoke little. Nothing at all of Arthur or the Imnada or his time imprisoned within the obelisk, but Katherine watched him when he wasn’t looking, noting his dark inward gaze, his face harsh as the granite that had shackled him for a millennium. She wasn’t surprised when he disappeared, though she worried over him after he left. Silly, she knew, for no man looked more capable of taking care of himself than Lucan. Still, in the afternoons while James slept she would pull out the silver disk the Imnada warlord had given her, tracing the symbols there. Protection, he had called it. But from who or what she did not know.
At one point during her vigil, a hand squeezed her shoulder, the familiar, comforting scents of tobacco, peppermint, and old books surrounding her. She and her father had not spoken of that one fateful kiss from which all else had spun. She’d not brought it up and he’d not broached the subject. Instead it had risen like an impenetrable wall between them, adding tension to an already anxious situation—until tonight.
“You were so young, child. So trusting,” Father said quietly, as if answering an unspoken question. She sat pinned to her seat, the words beating on her heart like waves on a rock. “I was afraid he would treat your innocence as a challenge and tire of you once the chase ended. I’d seen it happen so often among the wealthy, brainless good-for-nothings I taught over the years. Maidens ruined. Lives destroyed.”
“I don’t want to speak of it.” She closed her eyes, trying to re-create her initial fury over the deception, but she achieved nothing beyond exhaustion and a dull ache that might once have been regret.
“We must, Katherine. I want you to understand what drove me to make such a decision.”
She spun round to face him, her voice low, almost a hiss. “I don’t care. Don’t you see? It’s over and done with. It doesn’t matter anymore. You were right to send James away all those years ago. I see that now.”
His scruffy gray brows rose into his hairline. “Do you? Then perhaps you’ll explain things to me, because I’m quite in the dark.”
She looked away, but he caught her chin as if she were a child and made her look at him.
“Katherine, I may be old, my days of romance long behind me, but even I can see you love the boy, and he you.”
“Then you need to clean your spectacles.”
He chuckled, but his gaze remained grave. There would be no dodging the question. Father had the tenacity of a badger and the patience of a saint. Best to have this conversation and be done with it.
“James would have let you die.” Her hands tightened on the heavy wool of her skirts. “He would have allowed d’Espe to kill you without lifting a single finger to help. It’s obvious he hasn’t forgiven you . . . us . . . for what happened five years ago. No doubt as soon as he received your letter, he began plotting his revenge. And everything he said since he arrived was nothing but pretty falsehoods. As hollow as one of his conjurings.”
He nodded sagely, tapping a finger to his chin, his eyes straying now and again to James’s sleeping form in bed. “If that were true, that would indeed be a grievous crime. But might you entertain another possibility? That he chose to defy the chevalier and risk my life, not out of vengeance against me, but out of love . . . for you?”
Now it was her turn to express confusion, but her father held up a hand before she could refute his hypothesis.
“Let me clarify. Duncallan knew Monsieur d’Espe better than either of us. Knew his long obsession with the Imnada as well as the dark powers he’d gathered to himself. As long as you remained within the wards James cast, you were safe. He had made sure of it. And your safety counted for everything.”
“Even against your life?”
Her father wiped his brow with a large handkerchief, his expression pained. “When you love someone, Katherine, you will go to any length and sacrifice anyone to protect them. Even when you know in your heart it is the wrong thing to do.”
She sensed the conversation had strayed from James’s current sins to her father’s past actions. “Is that why you sent for him?”
“You were my little girl, Katherine. A mere child.” He rubbed his chin. “And then you weren’t. It took Duncallan’s kiss to make me realize that. By the time I realized the depth of your connection, you were living with your aunt and he was a newly minted baron amid the social whirl of London. I couldn’t make amends, and so I said nothing. But the lie ate at me always. When I saw a chance to right my wrong, I took it.” He removed his spectacles, wiping his eyes with his sleeve. “I want you happy, Katherine. I don’t think you have been—not truly. Not since I sent him away.”
“And his actions in the cave count for nothing?”
“Not nothing. Everything. He did it for you. He’s special, Katherine. Aside from the fact that he bears the blood of the Fey in his veins, he is vested with talent, a quick mind, and a dogged persistence. A fitting husband for my only daughter.” He squeezed her shoulder, his smile tremulous. “But you must ask yourself: Are you a fitting wife for him? Look in your heart. Do you still love him as much now as you did five years ago?”
She stared at James’s sleeping form beneath the blankets. Sweat-dampened hair curling against his neck. Long-fingered, capable hands. A square stubbled jaw. She’d memorized each gaunt valley biting deep into the sides of his mouth, each frown line creasing his forehead, the new scar by his l
eft eye and the old one at his jawline. She tried recalling each moment of their precious hours within his spell-woven Aladdin’s cave. Each caress, each kiss, each whispered promise already seemed like a half-forgotten dream. When he woke, would he be that man who’d offered her a second chance, or would events have conspired to forever deny them a fresh start?
“I love him, Father,” she declared, but he had already left the room, and James slept on.
It was as if the words had never been said.
* * *
He watched her coming over the grass, her stride long and easy, hips swaying with just the right amount of come-hither temptation, foxy hair catching the late afternoon sun, her cognac golden gaze drawn into an irritated schoolmarm’s scowl. “James Piers Kenrick Farraday, what on earth do you think you’re doing?”
Oh, yes, she even had that lecturer’s bellow down perfect. Her father would be proud.
He shrugged, wincing at the pain that shot down his left arm at the gesture. Adjusted his stance to take the weight from his left leg. “Admiring the view.”
She drew up in front of him, windblown and smelling of pine. Cheeks pink from more than mountain air. Freckles dotting her nose. “You shouldn’t be straining that leg so soon by walking all the way out here.”
“I could rest for the next ten years and this leg wouldn’t be any better. You and I both know that. Almack’s dance floor is forever safe.”
She bit her lip, her gaze cutting away, and the moment of camaraderie was broken. It had been this way between them for weeks. Katherine had maintained a cool distance, never spending time alone with him unless forced to. Even then she refused to look him in the eye or speak more than commonplaces. Occasionally, she would falter and they would share a laugh or he’d catch a glimpse of some deep emotion in her gaze, but it would vanish as quickly as it arose, and he couldn’t be certain he’d even seen it.
He’d allowed this strained civility to continue, but only because it was safer on his bruised heart than hearing the blunt truth. If she didn’t say the words, he could pretend she still loved him. That those hours within the ruin had not been all he would ever have of her.
But that ended now.
“I’m leaving at the end of the week,” he said. “I’ve been away from London too long, and there are people I must see.”
Annoyance leaked from her face, replaced by an expression he couldn’t read, but she remained silent.
He’d the urge to shake her ’til her teeth rattled, the silly gudgeon, but for the fact her ridiculous assumptions weren’t completely wrong. He took a deep breath, scanning the clearing—the barren circle of pounded earth with naught but a few tumbled stones at its center to prove the obelisk ever existed; the broken and leaning trees at the edge of the wood as if a great hand had scythed them down; and the unmistakable bristling crackle of Fey magic electrifying the air like a summer storm charge. “The Fey won’t be happy to see their work undone and their prisoner freed.”
She followed the track of his stare. “Everyone believes Lucan a cruel and vicious murderer. A monster.”
“Are they wrong? His treachery and crimes led to suffering unimaginable—for Other and Imnada.”
“I can’t believe that, James. He saved us. We would have died without his help.”
“One small good against an eternity of evil won’t tip the scales. If anyone ever discovers the truth about who he is, he’ll be hunted down by both sides. Lucan may be freed of the obelisk, but he remains as trapped as ever.”
“It’s hopeless?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t say that. Where there’s life, there’s always hope.”
Her gaze lifted to his in recognition. “Lucan spoke the same words.” Reaching within her bodice, she withdrew the silver disk, still upon its chain. It turned in the breeze, the light catching the etched runes, winking like a joke. “He gave it to me, but it really belongs to you.”
A smile tugged at his mouth. Oh, yes, this was a hurdle he could leap with or without a game leg and a body that felt like a pugilist’s punching bag. In fact, he savored the challenge. He leaned close. “Would you mind doing the honors?” he asked sheepishly, bowing his head.
He felt her reluctance. Felt the tremor in the air that signaled her uncertainty. But she did as he asked, lifting the chain over his head. The links were cool upon the back of his neck. The disk heavier than he remembered. But he was more interested in the brush of her fingers sending shivers down his spine and the warmth of her breath upon his cheek. He stepped into the circle of her arms before she had a chance to back away. “Things have gone wrong between us, Katherine. I would mend them before I go . . . if I could.”
She sought to retreat, but he held her firmly. She would hear him out before she crushed his last hope. “I love you, Miss Lacey. Then, now, and forever. And I also know what keeps you from returning that love.”
She drew a sudden, startled breath, brows quirked in question.
“Your father explained your questions and your lingering doubts. And you’re right. I did come to Wales half hoping to make you fall in love with me again.” She stiffened in his arms but he kept talking, hammering away at her resistance. “I never imagined in a million years, you actually would. Or that I would fall as hopelessly in love with you this time as I did all those years ago in your father’s parlor.” He lowered his head so he might gaze directly into her golden eyes, his voice hoarse, barely more than a whisper. “I would smash the world if it kept you safe. And I would offer it to you in the palm of my hand if it would bring you back to me.”
She choked back a sob, her breathing quick and sharp, and then her hands were pulling him against her, each fitting perfectly against the other like spoons in a drawer. He kissed her hair, the edge of one ear, the only things he could reach while her face was buried in his shirtfront. She said something, the words lost in his cravat.
“What was that?” he asked, happiness bubbling up through him like champagne.
“I love you, James Farraday, and this time you’re awake to hear it.” She curved a hand around his neck, pulling his head down to hers. He paused just at the last, her lips a bare inch away, his body like a plucked wire.
“Marry me, Katie love. Say you’ll be my lady.”
She looked up, her eyes alight with stars, a smile piercing his heart. “But I doubted you. I suspected you of horrible schemes.”
“The most odious imaginable.” He laughed, tilting her face to his, her lips soft as he kissed her, his body hard as he dragged her close enough to understand how long it had truly been. “But I’ve waited five years to make you mine. I’ll not let you off the hook that easily.”
“Then that is most very definitely a yes, my lord.”
He pulled her against him as he poured his need into a slow, sensuous seduction that would put any remaining doubts between them to rest. His mouth moved from behind her ear to her neck and into the valley of her breasts. Her scent acted like an aphrodisiac, his every nerve raw and jumping with a craving only she could appease. Her shawl slid away, ribbons pulled free, buttons popping one by one as he explored, with hands and mouth, the silken slope of her shoulder, palmed one luscious breast, his thumb lazily tracing her sensitive nipple. He smiled as she arched into his touch, her hands braced upon his shoulders as he teased her with his stroking touch. Gods help him, if his bad leg gave out now, he’d drag her down with him. His mouth curved against her flesh. Not a bad idea, though perhaps not the most convenient place for a consummation.
She moaned, eyes closed, lips parted as a shudder ran through her.
A jolt of electricity jumped from his groin to his brain and he gave a half-gasping laugh as she slid a hand within his breeches. Suddenly a wild thought punctured the hazy spell wrapped round them.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, her eyes dark and glassy with arousal.
He gazed over her shoulder. “I don’t know why, but I keep waiting for your father to interrupt.”
Her hand moved, s
teadily mounting waves of pleasure pushing him ever close to a teetering edge. “Let him bloody well try,” she whispered with those perfectly pink, perfectly full, perfectly kissable lips. Then she kissed him.
Keep reading for an excerpt from DEMON’S CURSE:
Book One in the Imnada Brotherhood Trilogy
By Alexa Egan
Available from Pocket Books in January 2013
1
ST. JAMES’S PICCADILLY CHURCHYARD, LONDON
OCTOBER 1816
Bianca paid off the hackney with the last shilling she’d tucked in her reticule that morning. She could only hope the rain that had threatened all day would hold off a few hours more. She didn’t relish a long, soggy trudge, especially since she’d stupidly worn her newest bonnet and a lovely pelisse in violet merino wool she could barely afford. She pinched her lips together. Actually, she hadn’t been able to afford it at all, but Adam insisted the color became her perfectly. Like a graceful purple Iris ensata, he’d raved. Rain or no rain, it seemed fitting to wear the outfit to say good-bye to her dearest friend.
She regretted coming as soon as she descended onto the flagway. A mob thronged the area around St. James’s. What did they imagine? That they might catch sight of Adam’s naked, ravaged body? That he might rise from the grave to point an accusing finger? Expose his murderer to the world?
Whispers swirled around her.
“. . . recognize her from Covent Garden . . . Viola last spring . . . beautiful . . . no better than she should be . . . foreigner . . . actress . . . dead man’s whore . . . murderess . . .”
A shiver raced up her spine, but as if she were preparing her entrance onstage, she firmed her shoulders, straightened her back, and lifted her chin, eyes sparking. Adam had been her friend. He hadn’t deserved to die as he had, and she owed him a final farewell. Crowds and their ugly slander be damned!
Bianca passed through the churchyard to the grave site. Once beyond the ghoulish sightseers, she found herself almost alone in her grief. A minister presided over a trio of men standing awkwardly, their faces arranged in expressions of mourning, though she questioned their sincerity. After all, she’d never seen any of them before. Not once in all the time she’d known Adam.